Old transformer station on Welland Canal
The building shown in our old photo this week looks like: A train station? A public market? Maybe a public library?
None of the above. It was a hydro transformer station, on a slip of land lying between channels of the third and fourth Welland canals, perhaps a half-mile south of Lock 7 of the fourth canal. Our old photo was taken from east of the canal, with the third canal in the foreground, the fourth canal behind the building and the buildings of Thorold in the distance.
A transformer station was a constituent part of the hydro electric power system established in the Niagara Peninsula toward the end of the 19th century. Hydro power is easier to transmit long distances when its voltage is greatly increased over the way it comes from the hydro generators that produce it. This requires there be transformer stations at each end of the generator-to-user transmission — one at the production end to increase the voltage of the power being transmitted, and one at the other end to transform the voltage down again to a level enabling it to be distributed to the final users of the power.
In this case the hydro power being transformed was likely that generated in Niagara Falls. Near a generating station in Niagara Falls a transformer station took the power generated by the falls and greatly increased its voltage before sending it off to the end users. Our building in Thorold received that hydro power and transformed its voltage to a level that it could be distributed to customers, commercial or domestic.
The history of this building ’s life is not entirely clear. It dated back to at least 1908, when the oldest known photo of it was first published. When it was built it stood a short distance west of the third Welland Canal, at a time when work had not yet begun on today’s ship canal. The digging of the channel for the fourth canal a decade or two later left the transformer building on a narrow strip of land between the two waterways.
The building can be seen standing in aerial photos of the canal until the late 1960s. A decade later other aerial photos show its former location vacant. However, it is believed the building actually ceased performing its transformer function as early as the 1930s, being replaced by a building that still stands at the corner of Chapel Street South and Welland Canals Parkway, the building that in recent years has served as a tourist information centre.
And the old transformer building? All that can be seen of it today is the concrete pad it used to rest on, now in the wilderness east of the canal, near the far west end of Old Thorold Stone Road.